Disabling virtual memory in Win2K

Question

The Western Digital 'Lifeguard/Windows' program I used to make a copy of my C:\ hard drive failed to copy one important file: 'pagefile.sys'. As a consequence, I could not boot the copied disk (Win2K would not let me get to the Desktop). My new plan is to 'disable virtual memory'on the C:\ disk BEFORE I copy it. This means that, in the 'Performance Options' of My Computer, I will set both the 'Initial Size' and the 'Maximum Size' to zero. This makes me nervous, however, since if I do that, I do not know if I can re-boot my C:\ disk if the copied disk does not work. Does anyone have experience doing that with Win2K?

SloMoShun · Answer

Here's a Microsoft article that should help you with sizing:

http://support.microsoft.com/?KBID=99768

As for copying one hard drive partition to another hard drive, I've always used Norton Ghost and, Partition Magic for any tweaking.

mlassiter · Answer

Thanks for the reply. I was beginning to think no one has tried to copy a Win2K hard drive. Perhaps you can help me with 2 questions:

1) In a "chat session" with Norton Tech Support (after explaining my problem with "pagefile.sys"), they suggested that if I use Norton Ghost I read a couple of items in their data base: Doc ID # 2005052419404662 which, in turn, suggested that I might want to "disable virtual memory" as described in Doc ID # 2002121815131639 . That is one I described that "makes me nervous". In working with Ghost and Win2K, have you found it necessary to "disable virtual memory" and, if so, have you had trouble with re-booting the C:\ disk? As a precautionary measure, should I, perhaps, save the Registry so I can "recover" if re-boot does not work? Are there other precautions I should take?

2) Doc ID # 2002121815131639 in turn suggests Doc ID # 2000110615402439 to perform a "clean boot" (i.e. to remove "extra programs from starting when Windows loads"). It describes doing this process via Registry Editor. I was thinking, instead, of using msconfig.exe to disable all Startup processes. Have you ever found this advisable?

SloMoShun · Answer

I haven't had the problems or heard about the warnings to disable the pagefile.sys file before moving a partition to a new hard drive. For me, it's basically a matter of creating the partitions on the new hard drive, formatting them, then copying the content of the old hard drive to the new partitions. Ghost operates in its own "enviorment" (looks like DOS but I suspect, in the latter versions, it is a form of Linux) so there's no need to disable startup items. I'm a little "old skool" because I use Microsoft's FDISK utility to setup my new hard drive, but that's because I only recently started to use Partition Magic and I'm still a little unsure of myself (basically, I only use it to resize partitions as the need arises).

Here's a guide that I've relied on for many years to help me when I use Norton Ghost:

http://ghost.radified.com/

Btw, Ghost is not the only or best progie that will perform this cloneing for you; its just the one that I'm most comfortable with.

Windows General

Disabling virtual memory in Win2K

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